Date of Award

Spring 5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Department

Management

First Advisor

Marcia Dickerson

Abstract

Today’s business world is more complex and uncertain than ever due to the unpredictable interdependencies caused by factors such as technology and globalization; accordingly, stress-inducing job demands have never been more prevalent. In order to cope with such demands, employees need to go beyond resilience and embrace disorder as a tool for growth. In this dissertation, I introduce the concept of antifragility to the workplace as a psychological resource that utilizes disorder to its advantage. In order to efficiently coincide with today’s complexity and uncertainty, an employee has to gain more than lose from disorder, simply put, s/he has to be antifragile. Furthermore, I distinguish among the constructs of adversity, growth, and adaptation by proposing a continuum and a circumplex on which antifragility, resilience, and fragility lie. In Study 1, I develop measures for antifragility, resilience, and fragility based on the conceptualization, assess their content validity, and conduct exploratory factor analysis to confirm their structure.

In Study 2, I test the convergent and discriminant validity of the developed scales by comparing them to existing similar constructs. Furthermore, I test the incremental validity of antifragility in predicting relevant individual outcomes above and beyond similar psychological resources. In Study 3, I test the nomological network of antifragility to assess its criterion validity. In Study 4, based on the job demands-resources model, I test a hypothesized model involving the role of antifragility in the appraisal of stressors in the workplace. More specifically, I hypothesize an integrated moderated mediation model in which antifragility moderates the indirect relationship between challenge/hindrance stressors on approach role/resource crafting and avoidance role/resource crafting through challenge/hindrance appraisals.

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